1 . Christmas is the most important Christian holiday. For all the cards sent and trees decorated — to say nothing of all the Nativity scenes displayed — Christmas is not the most important date on the Christian calendar. Easter, the day on which Christians believe Christ rose from the dead, has more religious significance than does Dec. 25. Christ’s resurrection means not just that one man conquered death, nor was it simply proof of Jesus’s divinity to his followers; it holds out the promise of eternal life for all who believe in him. If Christmas is the season opener, Easter is the Super Bowl. Read full article > >

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Five myths about Christmas

A top aide to Newt Gingrich is out of a job after he made disparaging comments about the Mormon faith. Craig Bergman, Gingrich’s political director for Iowa, said in a focus group last week that many Christian conservatives were uncomfortable with Mormonism — GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. are both members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Read full article > >

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Gingrich aide out after Mormon comments

A top aide to Newt Gingrich is out of a job after he made disparaging comments about the Mormon faith. Craig Bergman, Gingrich’s political director for Iowa, said in a focus group last week that many Christian conservatives were uncomfortable with Mormonism — GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. are both members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Read full article > >

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Gingrich aide out after Mormon comments

At Monday night’s deadline to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players, the Washington Nationals cut ties with left-handed reliever Doug Slaten and tendered their other six players slated for arbitration — Michael Morse , John Lannan , Tyler Clippard , Tom Gorzelanny , Jesus Flores and Jordan Zimmermann . Read full article > >

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Nationals tender contracts to six players, non-tender Doug Slaten

Kate Krader ( @kkrader on Twitter ) is Food & Wine's restaurant editor. When she tells us where to find our culinary heart's desire, we listen up. The gifts you give at Christmas say a lot about you. They can say, I Love You. They can say, I Didn’t Think About You Until the Last Minute Which Is Why I’m Blatantly Regifting This Gift to You. Or they can say, I Think You’re Pretty Weird and This Gift Reflects That. So, be on the lookout for the gifts below. They say a lot. Bacon Wallet . It’s not like bacon is hard to find: you’ve probably already had a bacon doughnut, bacon cupcake and bacon-tini cocktail today. But the folks at Accoutrements seem to have thought long and hard about the last remaining non-bacon frontiers and gone for it. Hence their bacon air freshener, bacon (shaped) adhesive bandages and Mr. Bacon Bendable Action Figure. And, yes, the bacon wallet. Says one satisfied customer on Amazon: “If you’re rakin’ in the bacon, takin’ a bacon wallet is the best move you be makin’.” Mustache Egg Fryer Mold . If you got that bacon wallet as a gift and felt like something was still missing, voila: A mold that shapes your fried eggs into a handle-bar mustache. As an added bonus for the holidays, it works the same magic on cookie dough. Island Dogs, the group that distributes this inimitable piece, also offers gifts like the Three Wise Men Flask Set (those three wise men being Jack, Johnnie and Jim) and a ring that doubles as a beer can opener. Cricket LickIt Lollipops . Here’s what you need to know about these lollipops. They’re priced at around $60 for a box of 36. They come in blueberry, grape, strawberry and orange. And each one has a real, presumably not live, cricket inside. If you get sick of them, the same company makes scorpion apple suckers. The Grilled Cheesus . Maybe you saw that Glee episode where Finn thinks he sees Jesus’s face in a grilled cheese sandwich. Now that experience is yours to savor (no pun intended) every day. The Grilled Cheesus (a now trademarked name) is an electronic sandwich press that toasts Jesus’s face onto sandwiches. “Your prayers have been answered,” says the press release. More from Food & Wine : Best Gifts Under $20 Easy Food Gifts Best Pizza Places in the U.S. Christmas Cookies Best Burgers in the U.S.

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Wacky gifts for food freaks

An atheist group argues that a statue of Jesus at the Whitefish Mountain Resort violates the separation of church and state because it is on federal land.

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In Montana, Jesus Statue Is Focus of Legal Battle

Two months before Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez allegedly fired shots on the White House , he asked an Idaho University student to videotape him as the second coming of Christ. “It’s not just a coincidence that I look like Jesus. I am the modern-day Jesus Christ that you all have been waiting for,” Ortega-Hernandez says in the 20-minute video. Read full article > >

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Alleged White House shooter believed he is ‘modern-day Jesus Christ’ (VIDEO)

“What would Jesus think of Occupy Wall Street ?” I asked myself this week as I wandered the makeshift, blue-tarp village in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park . Born with little means into a first-century world, the historical Jesus might feel right at home with the very aspects of the occupation that so many 21st-century observers consider gross: the tents, the damp sleeping bags, the communal kitchen. Jesus would have sympathy, I think, with the campers’ efforts to keep a small space sanitary in the absence of modern plumbing. Read full article > >

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Jesus at Occupy Wall Street: ‘I feel like I’ve been here before’

Dear Governor Romney, You haven’t asked, but I’d like to offer you some free, nonpartisan advice about how to talk about your Mormon faith in public. When a Texas megachurch pastor can rob you of a news cycle, as the Rev. Robert Jeffress did last weekend when he called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a “cult” at a meeting of religious conservatives, you need to do a better job of explaining your beliefs. Read full article > >

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An open letter to Mitt Romney

Dear Governor Romney, You haven’t asked, but I’d like to offer you some free, nonpartisan advice about how to talk about your Mormon faith in public. When a Texas megachurch pastor can rob you of a news cycle, as the Rev. Robert Jeffress did last weekend when he called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a “cult” at a meeting of religious conservatives, you need to do a better job of explaining your beliefs. Read full article > >

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An open letter to Mitt Romney

The first time he ran for president, Mitt Romney chose again and again to confront the suspicions and prejudices held by many in the Republican Party’s evangelical base about his Mormon faith. This time, Romney is focusing relentlessly on the economy and is conspicuous in how rarely he talks about God. He no longer tries to convince evangelical voters that he is as Christian as they are, that Jesus Christ is his personal savior and that he, too, reads the Gideon Bible before bed. Read full article > >

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Romney, his Mormonism a campaign issue again, condemns religious bigotry

A mobile phone advertisement featuring an illustration of Jesus winking is banned and called “disrespectful” by the advertising watchdog.

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Mobile phone Jesus advert banned

The woman with the red rosary opens the red door and sees Jesus Christ. He is six feet away, encircled by a gold sunburst, flanked by two candles, heralded by a single cricket outside in the shrubbery of suburban Maryland. The woman kneels in the presence of her Creator. Jesus, my savior and my God, kneeling humbly here before you, I wish to adore you with all the powers of my soul and I consecrate my whole being to you. In the midnight hour, the chapel in the church in the grove of oaks is a still-life tableau: the beige carpeting, the 13 burgundy chairs, the peace lilies, the wicker basket full of handwritten petitions from parishioners, the sunburst monstrance with the exposed Eucharist, which Catholics believe is the actual body of Christ. Read full article > >

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At St. John Neumann, a perpetual procession of prayer

I’m sorry to say that this probably will be my last column, due to circumstances beyond my control. Apparently, the world is ending. This information, as you likely have heard, comes from painstaking mathematical calculations by religious broadcaster Harold Camping of Family Radio and advertised on billboards across America and in more e-mails than I can count. According to Camping, God decided to conduct a rolling apocalypse, holding it at 6 p.m. Saturday in each time zone (the Lord evidently adjusts for daylight savings time). So at midnight Friday in Washington, Jesus will already be calling followers on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean to the rapture. Read full article > >

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Signs of the apocalypse

Christians mark Jesus Christ’s Last Supper on Maundy Thursday, but new research suggests it took place on the Wednesday before his crucifixion.

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Jesus’ Last Supper ‘was on a Wednesday’